Possible New Suspect-how to go about research please?

[The Grave Maurice]

...but yes, Spitalfields did sell meat.

Evenin' Monty,

I don't doubt for a moment that you're right, but could you please tell me your source for that. I spent some time poking around and could only find that Spitalfields sold meat up to the 1850s. I'm sure I read somewhere that it was out of the meat business by the time in which we are interested. Dickens's Dictionary of London (1888 edition), for example, classifies Spitalfields as a vegetable market.

[Siobhan Patricia Mulcahy]

Evenin' Monty,

I don't doubt for a moment that you're right, but could you please tell me your source for that. I spent some time poking around and could only find that Spitalfields sold meat up to the 1850s. I'm sure I read somewhere that it was out of the meat business by the time in which we are interested. Dickens's Dictionary of London (1888 edition), for example, classifies Spitalfields as a vegetable market.

Hi Kerrypn,
Could the research be broadened out from the Spitafields area to the Whitechapel district - especially if you are getting bogged down in details and getting nowhere specific ? You might find that YOUR suspect had a link to or worked with other butchers in the wider area. Whitechapel may have been teeming with people in 1888 but people in a particular trade tended to associate with each other just like people today "network" to get ahead in their careers.

JACOB LEVY (1856 – 1891) was a Jewish butcher who lived and worked in the Whitechapel district with his wife and two children. He was convicted of theft in 1886 and served several months in jail after the collapse of his butcher's business. On his release from prison, he began to complain of “voices in his head” and told his estranged wife he “feared he would harm” someone. He blamed prostitutes for giving him syphilis and believed his entire family had become infected.
A man fitting Levy's description was seen with Catherine Eddowes immediately prior to her murder, but the witness – who was also Jewish – said he would refuse to testify in the event of a court case.
Detective Constable Robert Sagar said: “We had good reason to suspect a man who worked in Butcher's Row, Aldgate. We watched him carefully and there is no doubt that this man was insane.
After he was removed to an asylum, there were no more Ripper atrocities.” Levy died in an asylum from paralysis brought on by syphilis in 1891.

Could YOUR MAN and Levy have known each other?
Do records exist of any butchers meetings of the day?
And okay, it's a long shot...but could they have been in cohoots!